On April 25, which was awesome weather, my friend Brian Rock* asked me if I wanted to go hit a bucket of golf balls at Quail Creek in North Liberty. Eventually, I realized that doing so would mean I would touch a lot of dirty balls.
I declined.
Does COVID-19 live on a golf ball? If one golf ball has it, do they all have it in the bucket?
When I reread this in the future, I hope I think those are silly questions.
To timestamp this moment in my life, there is now a lot of talk about reopening businesses. The date for working Some say, "Yes, I own a business and if I don't re-open, I will lose my livelihood." Others say, "No, everyone needs to stay at home for another N months, so we can eradicate this virus."
As I've described elsewhere, I am cursed with seeing both sides to pretty much any topic. In this case, I can't imagine being the owner of a business that was forced to close and sitting and waiting for the news that I can re-open. I also don't want people to go "back to normal" (if that can even exist) and to think that "we beat this virus and I can do every thing I did before."
I don't know the right answer to the question, "When should a state re-open?" I wish a time machine because if I did, I could go to that date, remember it, and then return to the present to tell everyone when it will be safe.
*By the way, that's not his actual last name, but I refer to him as "Brian Rock" on this blog because I had to distinguish him from "Brian Guitar" who played in Lou's Classic Ride. If you knew his last name, you would call me clever.
I have been tasked to choose ten albums that have influenced my taste in music. One album a day for 10 consecutive days. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
Every day I will nominate someone else. (If you're not interested, not a problem)
Day 10
Note:
Note: I have to post *one* of the tunes that was on this album because I sincerely hope you take a few minutes to hear a band you may not have heard before.
There are SO many more albums that I could have selected for this final spot, but I ultimately went with Riot's "Thundersteel" tune. This is a live version of the cassette that Scott Golden brought to my house in summer 1989. I remember being flabbergasted by the guitars and the double bass drums and then the vocals! It was a gateway band to many other bands in the same genre - I've never forgotten the way it made me feel on that day. The video below is from a 2018 concert.
You remember concerts, right? Sigh....
Day 9
Note:
Note: I have to post *one* of the tunes that was on this album because I sincerely hope you take a few minutes to hear a band you may not have heard before.
Day 8
Note:
Note: I have to post *one* of the tunes that was on this album because I sincerely hope you take a few minutes to hear a band you may not have heard before.
Motley Crue introduced me to the Beatles, thanks to "Shout at the Devil" as crazy as that sounds. In 1984, my parents took my brother & I on a vacation from Iowa to CA. We were in northern CA, when the four of us went into a KMart and emerged with a cassette tape for each of us to play on our Ford Econoline's cassette tape player. Dad got Billy Joel's "An Innocent Man," Mom got ... I think Olivia Newton-John's Greatest Hits, and I don't remember what my brother got. Me? Motley Crue's "Shout at the Devil" and, believe it or not, that album made it into the rotation as we traveled south, first to San Francisco, then to Hollywood, then east to Las Vegas and then CO for a whitewater raft trip down a river.
In the liner notes for my cassette tape, it revealed that the tune "Helter Skelter" was written by someone named "Lennon/McCartney" and I had no idea who that was until I got back home and found out, though in those pre-Internet days, I don't remember exactly how...
Anyways, the song that introduced me to the Beatles!
Day 7
Note:
Note: I have to post *one* of the tunes that was on this album because I sincerely hope you take a few minutes to hear a band you may not have heard before.
My grandma was my biggest supporter of my love for music and I always think about how poetically awesome it is that she bought my first album. We went to the Collins Road KMart in 1980 and I came home with it ... and Mom was NOT happy! Back in the day, a cassette tape was ~$13. She had told Grandma that I could get a 45 record, which was under $5, not a $13 cassette tape. Anyways, this album was popular and, to this day, I have never watched the movie.
This tune is still one of my favorite love songs.
Day 6
Note:
Note: I have to post *one* of the tunes that was on this album because I sincerely hope you take a few minutes to hear a band you may not have heard before.
Before Bayside, there was Count the Stars. Never get tired of hearing this album, even after all these years, at least once a week. I couldn't pick a single tune - I never skip any of these tunes.
Day 5
Note:
Note: I have to post *one* of the tunes that was on this album because I sincerely hope you take a few minutes to hear a band you may not have heard before.
Before Bayside, there was Count the Stars. Never get tired of hearing this album, even after all these years, at least once a week.
Day 4
Note:
Note: I have to post *one* of the tunes that was on this album because I sincerely hope you take a few minutes to hear a band you may not have heard before.
I wish I had tracked how many hours I spent air drumming to this album. I was proud of myself when I could nail the intricate parts in this tune.
Day 3
Note:
Note: I have to post *one* of the tunes that was on this album because I sincerely hope you take a few minutes to hear a band you may not have heard before.
Today's album came into my life in 1997. I was writing music reviews for http://www.dailyvault.com and was starting to receive many promo CDs in the mail. This promo CD for a band actually came in a big Federal Express soft envelope with ~20 other CDs. Somehow, this CD slid under my couch and was probably stuck there for a couple of days before I found it. Bigwig instantly became one of my favorite punk bands because of how raw, under-produced, and short the songs were - the entire album is barely 30 minutes! This is their cover of the theme from "Cheers" to give you a taste of their style.
Day 2
Note: I have to post *one* of the tunes that was on this album. Over the years, I have grown to truly appreciate the way Liberty Devitto contributed to BJ's tunes - I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the drum intro.
Day 1
Note: I have to post *one* of the tunes that was on this album that, as an impressionable 2nd grader, made me want to play drums. Somehow, my family had this album on 8-track tape.
Alex, Megan, Karen, and I are watching "The Office" together at night on Netflix.
Alex has watched the entire series
It is new to Karen and me.
Megan says she doesn't find the series funny after watching one episode. She says she felt dumber after she watched it, which is what she said after Karen, Megan, and I watched "Weekend at Bernie's" last week.
I understand why... but that doesn't change how odd it feels to not be preparing to head to Elkader.
It's not just the campground. Yesterday, I received an email that said if you are an employee who is working remotely, you should plan to continue to work remotely until May 15th.
It feels like there's a lot of pressure on May 15th to deliver
the end of working from home
the opening of the campground
For the record, we have a seasonal campsite. I sent a check to Deer Run in April for ~$1700 that paid the balance of our seasonal campsite. The total for the season is $2471.00. The campsite is open for 183 days (6 months) from April 15 - October 15. That's a per day rate of 13.50273224043716. On May 15th, it will be closed for 30 days. 13.50273224043716 x 30 = $405.0819672131148 as credit towards our monthly electric bill, which is never more than $100, or towards the 2021 camping season. It's a decision to be made in the future as I think it's too early to make any sort of bet on the 2021 camping season - it's one of many uncertainties in life at this point. Thus, I'll be determining what our total for electricity was for the 2019 season and make an informed decision. I will also consider whether the $2471.00 seasonal rate is going to increase. In 2016, it was $2075; in 2017, it was $2161.40; in 2018, it was $2268.40, in 2019, it was $2471, so, roughly, it increases $98.80 a year so 2021 would be $2,569.80 (estimated).
This is the message I saw this morning. I am using a tool called Renamer Pro to isolate duplicate files. For the record, I have seen the confirmation message many times, with
the number of files being replaced with the number I've selected to
validate. It's always the "may take several minutes" verbiage, which
tells me that there is no coding done to say "If [selected files to
validate] > 800,000, then show this message "Do you want to validate
[selected files to validate] files? This operation may take several hours."
That would have been a nice change or to do a more accurate estimate
than "several minutes" - how do I define "several minutes" is certainly
going to be different from the way ... well, the way anyone else in the
world defines "several minutes." I understand the squishy word choice,
but that doesn't mean I think it is helpful to me.
My ultimate goal is to remove all the duplicate files from my external
hard drives and end up with "clean data" which I define as having zero
files that have (1), (2), (3), all the way up to
(999999999999999999999999999999) in the file name. THEN, when I get that
done, my plan is to repurpose my many external hard drives so that I
have a sane backup plan.
For the record, I have been working on this project for 4 years.
I'm not kidding.
Sometimes, I wonder how many files I would have if I didn't have files from the past. Do I really need a CEW roster from 2002? Do I really need our family Christmas letter from 2004? Do I really need either of those two files? Apparently, I answer in the affirmative. There are many more examples I could cite, but like it says in the Bible, paraphrased and without looking up the exact verse: Jesus performed many miracles that are not recorded here, but these are here so that you may believe.
Here's the sad thing. While I know where the ticket stub is for the 1989 and the 2017 concerts, I could not say, at this precise moment, where the other three ticket stubs are located or, frankly, if I even have those ticket stubs! I do not remember if I have ever seen them. My gut instinct would be to look in my journal from the year of the concert, but I don't recall seeing the ticket stub when I have reread those journals in the past. I am disappointed in myself for not creating a way to keep those ticket stubs available.
Just now, the thought occurred to me that I may have put the 1991 and 1993 ticket stubs in a folder I used to have with all kinds of Metallica information from newspapers and magazines. I have it in my head I would have done something like that. I am confident that I threw away that folder.
Where is my 2003 ticket stub? Great question that can be asked, not answered...
I have read a lot about salaries and from that reading, I have reached a conclusion about the author of the quote above, which is, the author does not understand business. I was an English major. I never took a class about business. A lot of what I think about business comes from reading and watching a show like "Shark Tank," where there is a lot of discussion about business. From all of that, I believe that a business exists for one reason: to make money. That's it. The way a business makes money is by getting as much as it can, whether it is office supplies, customers, market share, for as little amount of money that it can. That means a business will pay market value for its employees and that's exactly what it should pay its employees. For the person quoted above, they thought their salary was fine until they learned that a co-worker's contract and salary is worth more than the author's. Why is that? What does that co-worker 'bring to the table' that the author does not? The better question is, "How do I articulate to my boss that I bring as much or more value to the business than my co-worker?" And I have an answer for that: numbers. The author has to find the numbers to justify the author's value. It's not enough to point at the co-worker and say, "My co-worker does less than me; I do more, therefore, I deserve a higher salary." On the contrary, the co-worker likely provides a service that has a higher value to the company than the author. Another consideration might be that the co-worker negotiated the contract better than the author.
I suck at negotiating - I really do. I think I probably wrote about this in another post but I'll retell the story because of its relevance to this topic. When I was hired at NDP (Network Data Processing) on February 10, 1995, the Vice-President of the company offered me a salary of $17,500 a year to be the newest "Documentation Specialist" at the company. Frankly, I was caught off my game when he offered me the position because the interview process had started earlier that morning and no other company I had interviewed with had reached the salary negotiations on the same day as the interview. Yet, there I was, being offered a job. I didn't know what to say except to ask for $18,000. I had done no research on what I should expect for a salary so, because I hate math, all I did was round up to $18,000. Should I have asked for $25,000 a year? Or $50,000? Or $100,000? I have no idea. The point is this: the salary I agreed to accept is what I accepted. The Vice-President perceived my value to the company as $17,500; I perceived my value to the company as $18,000. The Vice-President accepted that his perception of my value was lower than my perception and probably because he had room in his budget for Documentation Specialist, he agreed. If the author above didn't negotiate a salary that was acceptable, that is on the author. During the next three years, I attempted to negotiate a higher salary. I decided that I should be making at least $20,000, but, as you might imagine, that never happened. I had established value to the company and, like the author above, the argument that because "someone else makes more, I should make more" was not successful to the extent that I wanted. Eventually, I had my final day at NDP on February 10, 1998, which was a Tuesday. The next day, I started as a technical writer at Jordan Systems, which is a story for another post.
The ability to perceive my value to a company is a weakness of mine and one that has pursued me like a rabid dog throughout my career. My response to the author in the screenshot above is to determine what your market value is to your employer. If you determine that you are not being paid market value, then you should ask for a salary adjustment. If your employer does not agree with your perceived market value, you need to determine if you are wrong about your number or if your employer is wrong. If your employer is wrong, find another job. I think it's unlikely that you will get a salary adjustment just because your coworker makes more money.
Knowing that April ends on Thursday does not mean I can't declare I am going to start and finish a project on Monday, which is my Dropbox account.
My folders are as organized as a plate of spaghetti. My goal is that by the time I go to bed on Thursday, April 30, 2020, what you see below will make more sense than it does right now!
As I begin to wade through my backlog, I needed some "new to me" Bayside in my ears, which is good because I found this playlist from Bayside when they played at the House of Blues in New Orleans, LA, back in December 2019. It's really awesome to see them rocking out with the electric instruments. It makes me sincerely wish that their 20th anniversary tour was not officially cancelled. I am glad that "Demons" was on their setlist - I really like that tune.
I don't know what the right answer is for "When should we re-open?" I don't know anything more than what I read in articles like this one - Some Businesses Unswayed - as well as listening to the four personalities - Ben Shapiro, Michael Knowles, Matt Walsh, and Andrew Klaven - on The Daily Wire YouTube channel each day this week. I think what each of them has said makes sense. One of Shapiro's main theme has been that the shelter-in-place idea came from the need to not overwhelm the healthcare systems and that has been successful. It was never to prevent the spread of it. Knowles spent a lot of time yesterday discussing the New York Governor's press conference when he was asked about what to say to people who are losing their businesses or people that say that they need to work. Knowles also pointed out that there are politicians who are trying to get their policies implemented as a side effect to what is happening. Walsh has spent time talking about how the Chicago mayor said that you shouldn't get your hair done and then went and got her hair done because hygiene is important. And finally, Klaven has spent a lot of time talking about how it is important to save "The Klaven" (him) as well as how the hypocrisy of the media is awful.
I have a tremendous backlog There will be more posts about whatever you want to call this thing - Coronavirus, Novel Coronavirus, the China Virus, the Wuhan Flu, or COVID-19 - soon.
On the iowa city > for sale > cds / dvds / vhs - by owner page, this ad irks me.
I don't care that they request a $10 cash minimum purchase - that's fine. What irks me is that, if I wanted to buy all of these CDs - I don't! - I would need to do math.
Math sucks.
(3 x $1) + (3 x $2) + (9 x $3) + (11 x $4) + (6 x $5) + (2 x $6) + (2 x $8) + (1 x $10) + (1 x $15) = $163.
Why not just say, "Or buy all of them for $150!"
Instead, (belch) I'm going to make you do math!
$10 cash minimum purchase
$1 CDs
No Doubt Tragic Kingdom
Steely Dan Two Against Nature
Tesla Time’s Makin’ Changes: The Best of Tesla
$2 CDs
Red Hot Chili Peppers Blood Sugar Sex Magik
Smash Mouth Astro Lounge
Smithereens 11
$3 CDs
Pearl Jam Last Kiss/Soldier of Love (single)
Radiohead Hail to the Thief
Bonnie Raitt Luck of the Draw
Paul Simon Hearts and Bones (German import)
Bruce Springsteen The Ghost of Tom Joad
Toad the Wet Sprocket Fear
Tonic Lemon Parade
U2 How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb
VooDoo Blue Loa
$4 CDs
Randy Newman Lonely at the Top: Best of Randy Newman (European remaster)
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band Pure Dirt (U.K. import)
No Doubt The Singles 1992-2003
Nirvana In Utero (original uncensored back-tray image & title)
Pearl Jam Jeremy (“maxi” single)
Pearl Jam Vs.
Santana Abraxas
Tears For Fears Elemental
Van Halen 3 [aka III]
Tom Waits Small Change
Yellowcard Ocean Avenue
$5 CDS
Randy Newman Bad Love
Pearl Jam Yield (tri-fold digipak)
Elvis Presley Elvis Presley (U.K. import; his first live recordings—not released in U.S. in this format)
Soundgarden A-Sides
Amy Winehouse Back To Black
Neil Young Harvest Moon
$6 CDs
Pearl Jam Ten
Brian Wilson Brian Wilson Presents Smile (HDCD; boxed)
$8 CD
Awna Teixeira Where the Darkness Goes (digipak)
Frank Zappa Hot Rats
Work has kept me very busy this week. I have accumulated many - and I do mean MANY - ideas for blog posts since my last post. My intent is to nail a noon deadline today that I have and then, after noon, hopefully have enough time during my lunch hour to get caught up. Otherwise, I fear I will end up with a single post that is a list of links, which I do not like doing because my thought is that it reduces my overall post count when, if I had created posts "when I found the source for the blog post" as it happened, I would have individual posts. Creating a single post with 10 links when each of those 10 links could have been their own blog post reduces my overall count by 10. It's unfair to me because I have blog post goals per month.
Thus, this is a brief post to say I hope to create more posts after my noon deadline.
My wife is a RN at UIHC. Due to COVID-19, she was asked to work from 3 AM - 7 AM this week to help manage the influx of people coming in to UIHC. My wife had declared that I would not be taking her to work this week, but I did so today, April 20, 2020, and I plan to do so for the next 4 mornings. That was my vow - to be with my wife in good times and bad. Driving my wife to UIHC is not a "bad time" but, in general, with all the changes to our lives due to COVID-19, I feel like I need to do this.
What does this look like in real life? This is what my life has been like, starting with last night.
Whenever presented with the opportunity to do so, now that I have watched all of Ozark's Season 3 episodes, I have found a new show, called "Bloodline" on Netflix. I am in the first of three seasons. Last night, the kids and I started watching "Parks & Recreation" on Netflix. The kids went upstairs around 9 PM. That's when I started watching the first of 3 episodes of "Bloodline." When it was midnight, I went upstairs.
I couldn't sleep for the life of me.
I think I finally dozed off after 1 hour.
I got up at 2 AM and got dressed and brushed my teeth.
I drove Karen to UIHC for her shift and came home. I tried to fall asleep again. It took at least 30 minutes before I could do so.
My alarm went off at 6:15 AM and, let me tell you, I must have fallen into a deep sleep because getting up was difficult. Nonetheless, I got up and went back to UIHC to pick up Karen.
When we got home, I came downstairs to the den to begin my work day. I had a daily huddle meeting, using Zoom, at 8:20 AM and now, at 9:28 AM, Alex is sitting behind me, in the den, listening to his business class about the law through his headphones.
I am listening to an album / compilation of 18 tunes I created nearly 7 years. It is called "2013_04_25_Setlist for Scary Robots" because at the time that I created this album / compilation, Matthew (bass), Brian (guitar), Joe (vocals), and I had not agreed to call our group "Lou's Classic Ride."
This is an outstanding collection of tunes that I think make a fantastic setlist.
Last week, I edited 23 Knowledge Articles which were added to our Knowledge Repository. I'm editing these Knowledge Articles in MS Word, which is awesome (for me) because I am a MS Word. There was a requirement that kind of appeared out of nowhere, which is to add a 1/4" border around each graphic in the MS Word document. I remembered that I had this requirement in the past and set out to search all of my *.dotm and all of my *.docm files. While I was searching *my* files, I also used Google to find the two macros on the following page: https://superuser.com/questions/1288674/apply-border-style-to-all-pictures-with-vba-in-ms-word-2010
I am adding two buttons to my Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) for this functionality:
Applies the border to all graphics within the MS Word file
Unapplies the border to all graphics within the MS Word file
I feel good about the work I accomplished last week and, as the new week begins, I'm looking forward to editing two longer MS Word files. One of the MS Word files is 28 pages and has the most awful table of contents in my entire 25+ years of working with MS Word; the other MS Word file is 14 pages and doesn't have a table of contents in the file. After I begin working on these two files, I will likely be able to edit them quickly.
Until I posted about my I: drive in the previous post, I had not posted since Friday, April 10, 2020. Today is Wednesday, April 15, 2020. What is the cause of the gap in posts since I typically post Monday through Friday. Why nothing Monday? Why nothing Tuesday?
Well, there's been a lot of adjusting going on in my life.
Until Monday, during the COVID-19 pandemic, I had been working from my cubicle in my employer's building which is, literally, two miles from my house. I had done that because there were many of my co-workers who had decided that they were going to work from home. That meant that in my area of the building in an 18 cubicle section (6 rows of 3 cubicles each) there had been 3 or 4 of us actually working in the building. My cubicle is positioned where there were 6 empty cubicles to my right and usually 2 empty cubicles to my left. Actually, this is hard to describe in words. Here's a picture:
When the decision was made that wearing a face shield was going to be mandatory / expected, I decided that I didn't want to sit in front of my computer for 8+ hours a day with a face shield. Thus, on Friday, April 10, 2020, I carried a bunch of my stuff from my cubicle to the truck and then, eventually, down to the den, which is where I am sitting now.
As far as actual work goes, I know I have written about Knowledge Management elsewhere on this blog. With the COVID-19 pandemic and more co-workers working from home, there has been a need to post information about working from home in a central location.
I connected an external hard drive that is normally assigned to the letter I but for some reason, my laptop assigned it to the letter D. That's not a concern to me as I know how to change the assigned drive letter. What is concerning is this never-before-seen-by-my-eyes error message:
You can also use ROBOCOPY. It is very simple and can also be used to delete empty folders inside large hierarchy.
ROBOCOPY folder1 folder1 /S /MOVE
Here both source and destination are folder1, as you only need to delete empty folders, instead of moving other files to different folder. /S option is to skip copying(moving, in the above case) empty folders. It is also faster as the files are moved inside the same drive.
I'm currently testing out this idea now in a test directory structure and, thus far, it's working great. I created two files in Notepad and put each file in a separate folder. This means that when the above command is complete, if I have one folder with a single sub-folder under, each folder with a total of two files, I can add the above command to every DOS batch file I have ever created that uses "md" (make a directory) commands!
This is a great setlist. Spoiler: this is the highlight of this show, when James Hetfield talks to the audience and says, "When I was 12, I was not in the front row at a Metallica show. You have a very cool father." Melts my heart to hear those words!
But you should start at the beginning of this tune and go through the entire concert, not just watch and listen to the above snippet of the concert! Here it is! After initially not being a fan of "Hardwired" as either an album opener or as a concert opener, I admit I have warmed up to the tune. I think the combination of "Hardwired" and "Atlas, Rise!" go together like "We Will Rock You" and "We are the Champions" by Queen where it just doesn't feel right to hear "We Will Rock You" without then hearing the softer piano intro of "We Are the Champions." The setlist continues strong with a definite crowd-pleasing tune called "Seek & Destroy." While I also like this tune as a final tune at a concert, I think it fits well early as well. Pulling in "Leper Messiah" early into the set is also great because it is a tune that they don't play at every concert - for example, I've never heard that tune in person. Personally, I think it's a shame that it appears as though "The Day That Never Comes" is going to be the only tune from "Death Magnetic" to ever get played in even close to regular rotation. I think it is an okay tune. I think that "Fade to Black" and "The Day That Never Comes" should never be on same setlist as they are too similar, to my ears. Since this was the tour in support of "Hardwired to Self-Destruct," it makes sense that "Now That We're Dead," "Dream No More," and "Halo on Fire" are included in this setlist. I like that between "Dream No More" and "Halo on Fire," "For Whom the Bell Tolls" is slipped in as it is almost a requirement to hear at a Metallica concert. After Rob & Kirk's Doodle, I like the short "Las Caress" as they launch into the strong second half of the setlist. As you can see below, after "Las Caress," the other tune from their second album that they played this night comes, which is "Creeping Death." As I mentioned earlier, it makes sense to include "Moth Into Flame" since it is on "Hardwired to Self-Destruct." After "Moth Into Flame" comes the first of three tunes from their self-titled album, which is "Sad But True." I have gone from really liking "Sad But True" to being tired of it, to reading that it is Lars Ulrich's favorite tune to play because of the groove (I think that's what I read anyways!) and how the tune gives him the opportunity to improvise a bit during the tune. I am all for improvisation! Of course, "One" and "Master of Puppets" are required to be played at a Metallica concert. The final 3 tunes are the same tunes that Metallica played on Friday, June 9, 2017, when Alex and I saw them in concert in Newton, IA. I like "Blackened" as one of the tunes from "And Justice for All" that still gets played. It is the same type of evolution for "Blackened" for me as "Sad But True" where I really liked it, then grew tired of it, to really appreciating the 6/4 time signature giving the tune a different feel. And, of course, "Nothing Else Matters" and "Enter Sandman" close out the concert. I am old enough to remember when those two tunes were not always paired together - I remember "Enter Sandman" as a concert opener! - but it seems to be the way they are now going to group those two tunes from now on. I don't mind the pair of tunes, though I must say if I never heard "Nothing Else Matters" at a Metallica concert again, I wouldn't be sad. I do wish it could "fall" from favor with the band in the same way that some of their other tunes have over the years. It used to be that if you went to a Metallica concert, you would always hear the following tunes:
Whiplash
Fade to Black
Battery
Harvester of Sorrow
The Unforgiven
Fuel
Over the years, though, those tunes have been extracted and inserted into the setlist.
In the end, I do care what tunes Metallica plays in the future. It appears that "Atlas, Rise!" is not going to be a permanent spouse to "Hardwired to Self-Destruct" as there are setlists after this concert where "Hardwired" opens the concert and "Atlas, Rise!" is not the second tune.
Also, when I hear AC/DC's "For Those About to Rock" on the radio, I ALWAYS immediately think about Godsmack in concert. Why? Prior to Godsmack starting to play, there is a video that plays on their video screens and the video has AC/DC's "For Those About to Rock" as music. It always gives me goose bumps prior to Godsmack playing their first note!
This video brings tears to my eyes! All those kids, talking about music and what it means to them and the band members teaching all those kids how to play this tune. It sends shivers to my spine.
I set the Publish Date to 4/9/2019, which is one year to the day that this article was published. The article laments that Iowa men's basketball fans will miss a player who graduated in 2019. Here's the article: Iowa Basketball
After re-reading the article, is it true? Did fans (like me) miss that player during the 2019-2020 season?
Make the Answer as of 4/9/2020 Bold
Yes, 100% yes he was missed
No, 100% no he was NOT missed
50 / 50 split between he was and he was not
Even though this was published on March 24, 2020, I think it is worth remembering the achievements of Luka Garza as he was named on the First-Team All-American. I might quibble a bit if it should be "All-American First-Team" as well as if "First-Team" needs to be hyphenated, but whatever! Luka Garza is awesome and I hope he returns for his senior season as an Iowa Hawkeye. One "way-too-early" poll for the 2020-2021 season placed the Iowa Hawkeyes as a potential #7 team. I hope with all of my heart that it happens that way. I see the starting 5 for next year to be the following, with the caveat that none of the incoming freshman make enough of a splash once the Fall practices begin to nudge one of these five out of their starting spot:
Luka Garza
Jack Nunge
Jordan Bohannon
Joe Wieskamp
Connor McCaffery
Of course, the trick will be whether that group of 5 can gel as a unit. Nunge & Bohannon basically lost a year of 'game experience' playing with each other which you can't just make up through practices. The expectations will definitely be high for the upcoming season. I sincerely hope that all the hard work that happens between "now" and "this time next year in the 2020 NCAA Championship Tournament" pays off big time!
for /F "tokens=2" %i in ('date /t') do dir /T:C | findstr /C:%i /B
This command gets the list of all the files from the current folder that are created on the same day. You do not need to specify the date, the command automatically picks the current date.
You can add /s option to dir command to search in sub directories also. However, the file names will not have full path names, they are printed folder by folder. So you can make out which folder a file belongs to.
I am so JEALOUS! Over the 20+ years of my career, conversions - whether it
was OfficeVision to Word, WinHelp to HTML, or Word to Confluence - have been
my favorite projects. Even outside of work, I love converting - CDs to MP3,
vinyl to MP3, and cassettes to MP3. Conversions are my passion!
Recently, we've transitioned from authoring in Word and distributing PDFs to
using Confluence. I did not know anything about Confluence until I started
trying to maintain content in it.
One thing I think is worth considering - are your users going to "accept"
your docs on a wiki? We jumped into it, internally reviewed it (within our
dept & and within the company), gave it to the end-users and the first thing
they said? "How do I print a PDF of all the pages?"
<sigh>
We had to add a process for creating a PDF of the user guide that is posted
on our Home page. We make it clear that the PDF is a snapshot of the content
as of MM/DD/YY and that it is going to be quickly out of date if you print
the thing.
All that said, if you suspect you have multiple versions of the same text,
what I messed around with was creating a single (somewhat massive) Word doc
with all the Word doc content in it.
However, before I could do that, I took a copy of each document and replaced
the paragraph character with "- [unique_code]" so that when that document is
combined with all the other Word docs, you know where it came from. For
example, we have a "Adding a User" heading in all of our docs. If you
*don't* add a unique code to each paragraph, you get this:
Adding a User
Adding a User
Adding a User
Adding a User
Adding a User
And you don't know where they came from. For us, states are a good way to
group things so I had:
Adding a User - AZ
Adding a User- CO
Adding a User- FL
Adding a User- TX
Adding a User- VA
So, after you have that pre-processing done, combine the docs into a single
Word doc, because ultimately, what you want is something like this:
Adding a User - AZ
Adding a User- CO
Adding a User- FL
Adding a User- TX
Adding a User- VA
Changing a User - AZ
Changing a User - CO
Changing a User - FL
Changing a User - TX
Changing a User - VA
Then, you create a single version of your procedure, looking at how each
version is different. If there's something customer-specific, then you make
a note of that, but the end result is a single way you are going to tell
your users how to "add a user", how to "change a user", etc.
Then, and only then, do you begin thinking about include fields and such.
Otherwise, you are going to have very similar fields that have only slight
variations that are used for specific customers, but not a single "include"
for all of your docs.
That said, I came across this page the other day - http://www.paulpehrson.com/flare-content-reuse/ - that may be helpful. It's
older (2007), but some of the philosophy behind it (not the Flare-specific
things] may help you out.
-----Original Message-----
From: Jay Maechtlen
Sent: Tuesday, April 07, 2015 1:19 PM
To: TechWrl list
Subject: MS Word, includetext, and templates
We're using Office 2013 on Windows 7, deployment planned on SharePoint.
1) Anyone using includetext fields to consolidate multiple Word docs? Any comments on best practices, templates, styles, etc?
2) Anyone deploying on SharePoint Wiki sites? We intend to move docs to the Wiki, but building in Word until the Wiki is really ready. (and/or we know how to use it well enough.)
Current docs are combination of Word and Excel docs.
Comments, suggestions welcome.
Thanks
Jay
--
Jay Maechtlen
626 444-5112 office
626 840-8875 cell
www.laserpubs.com
The reference to "finding a bassist who would actually come to rehearsal was a struggle in the early days" is a blind swipe at the first bassist in the first band I was ever in - Assume - in the summer of 1989. The reference to "two guitars" is a salute to Kenny Schmitt and James Goodrich for the hours the three of us spent trying to hammer out tunes.
I used to think I was "good" at documenting my drumming, but I have come to believe I could have been better at it. I should have started a spiral notebook to document every time I jammed with a guitarist or took my drums to someone else's house for a jam session or took my drums to Saint Pius X in Cedar Rapids when I played in a group called "The Disciples of Soul." Doing that would have built a list to reflect upon, especially now when I can't go to Cedar Rapids and jam with RPM (Randy Paul Mark) in Randy's basement. I miss jamming "Cortez" with them. Skip to the 4:15 point in the video below:
